The Yangtze River which is the longest River in Asia

19/10/2012 14:28

The Yangtze River which is the longest River in Asia snakes its way over 6,300 kilometers from Western China’s Qinghai-Tiber Plateau to the East China Sea. It generally flows south and passes through Sichuan, Hubei, Anhui, and Jiangsu provinces and is the third longest river in the world. The longest being the Amazon, and the Nile. The river has over 700 tributaries, and crosses so many regions that it has acquired over half a dozen names. Only in the lower reaches does it go by its name commonly known to foreigners: Yangtze.More information about China Tours in chinatourguide.com.

A wide country as China never stops to surprise its visitors, offering much more than a monotonous tourist experience, indeed thanks to the Yangtze river and Yangtze Cruise it is possible book a cruise travelling along various remote and modern destinations at the same time, reviving the historical traditions and developments of this unique route. It is recommended to start the cruise from Shanghai, Shanghai flights. The Yangtze from Chinese “Long River” represents not only the China ‘greatest river, but also a main transport route of the past. The river extends itself for more than 4’000 miles, reaching the same size of the Mississippi. In fact it is the fifth largest river in the world (by volume) measuring ten times the Nile.

As previously mentioned the Yangtze has constituted a fundamental transportation path, promoting the development of several cities along its banks. Chinese civilization first developed along the Yellow river (Huang He) and shortly thereafter spread to two other major areas, the lower Yangtze basin and the rich agricultural lands of Sichuan covering an area of almost a thousand km. The Westernized name Yangtze come from the mix of the two rivers Yangzhou and Zhenjiang called Yangzi, as this has been the first name heard by British explorers and missionaries, that finally has stuck to it. The other reason of its name is that, the river’s name was in honour of the emperor Yang. However most of the locals are not familiar with the English version of the name, struggling to understand the word Yangtze, for this reason tourists should call the river with its proper mandarin terms “Chang Jiang”.